Of all the headaches that have been furrowing brows in the executive offices of NBC News these days, the one involving Ronan Farrow has proven particularly tenacious. Last August, NBC News spiked a Harvey Weinstein investigation that Farrow had been working on as a freelancer. (Farrow had previously hosted a show on MSNBC in 2015, but it was canceled due to low ratings.) He took the story to The New Yorker, which published it on October 10, days after a competing investigation by The New York Times rolled off the presses. The New Yorker and the Times went on to share the glory not only of taking down Weinstein for his alleged predatory behavior and sexual misconduct over the decades, but also for triggering a tsunami of so-called #MeToo journalism that has since held dozens of powerful men accountable for varying degrees of bad behavior. Those two outlets also went on to share a 2018 Pulitzer Prize in the prestigious public-service category, and Farrow has continued to churn out bombshells as a contributor at The New Yorker (our sister publication). Perhaps the most notable so far was a May 7 Jane Mayer collaboration that led to the light-speed resignation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over physical-abuse allegations that were painstakingly detailed. None of this has gone unnoticed by NBC brass, of course. And Farrow has been “a big topic of conversation” inside 30 Rock, an NBC News journalist told me. “Every time he makes a move, everybody is riveted by it.” (Both Weinstein and Schneiderman have refuted claims made against them.)

Farrow—previously best known as the precocious progeny of Woody Allen (with whom he is estranged) and Mia Farrow—has quickly become a journalistic celebrity and folk hero of the #MeToo movement. Inevitably, each new scoop and media appearance on his victory lap also tends to be seen as a black eye for his former employer. “Any regrets, @NBCNews?” Nicholas Kristofsneered after the Schneiderman story broke, in a tweet that summed up what many in the media industry have been thinking (and, frankly, saying). Such aspersions are just one more sign of an institution in the crosshairs, at least from a public-relations standpoint, from its Matt Lauer-induced #MeToo crisis, to wildly disappointing ratings for Megyn Kelly’s $23 million hour of Today, to a string of journalistic mini-scandals involving talent such as Joy Reid and Hugh Hewitt. (Lauer has denied allegations made against him.)

The #MeToo movement, in particular, has been a giant can of worms for NBC. The network wasted no time firing Lauer after sexual misconduct allegations arose, but then it seemed to play defense—the opposite of what the moment seemed to require. It came under heavy fire for doing an internal investigation into Lauer’s alleged misconduct, as opposed to bringing in an outside firm. When anchor emeritus Tom Brokaw was accused of misconduct, the wagons were swiftly circled. The fact that NBC passed on the very story that supercharged #MeToo furthers the narrative that the network is not fully woke. (Brokaw sent a lengthy letter to friends denying allegations made against him)

Now, Farrow is getting ready to tell his side of the story about what went down behind the scenes while he was reporting on Weinstein. Little, Brown and Co. announced last week that it will publish Catch and Kill, “a story that expands our understanding of the forces in law, politics, and media that maintained a conspiracy of silence around Weinstein and other men in power committing gross abuses with impunity.” The announcement amplified an already feverish curiosity among media insiders about why NBC let the Weinstein story go. In terms of what the new book may portend for the network’s leadership, industry executives I spoke with had the same take. The bottom line, they said, is that it will bring an embarrassing episode back into the headlines regardless of what new insight Farrow reveals or how damaging it looks. “His version of events,” said one of these sources, “will by nature put them on the defensive. They shouldn’t necessarily be worried that they did something bad that will be uncovered. It just means the current narrative isn’t going away, and it makes it harder to move on.”

Publicly, there are actually two competing narratives about why NBC News ended up passing on Weinstein. One, as elucidated by NBC News management, is that after giving Farrow “resources to report” the story “over many, many months,” as NBC News president Noah Oppenheimput it in a staff memo addressing the matter last October, the network “reached a point over the summer, where as an organization, we didn’t feel that we had all the elements that we needed to air it. Ronan very understandably wanted to keep forging ahead, so we didn’t want to stand in his way and he took it to The New Yorker and did a ton more extraordinary work . . . [T]he incredible story that we all read yesterday was not the story that we were looking at when we made our judgment several months ago.”

In this version, NBC was no different than the numerous other outlets—New York magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and The New Yorker itself—that had tried, over the years, to nail the Weinstein story, but just couldn’t quite bring it over the finish line, whether due to the colossal legal pressure from Weinstein’s camp or sources who weren’t willing to go on the record, or any other perfectly legitimate reason. “The notion that we would try to cover for a powerful person,” Oppenheim told employees, “is deeply offensive to all of us.”

The other version, outlined in a substantial HuffPost feature last year, is that Farrow was thwarted by higher-ups, despite deep sourcing and reporting that included what was more or less the Holy Grail of the Weinstein scandal: an audio recording in which a frantic Weinstein is heard admitting, to a surreptitiously wiretapped and palpably distressed Italian model, that he had groped her without consent. HuffPost’s sources described “a months-long struggle” in which “it became difficult to tell where the Weinstein team’s attempts to discredit the story left off and NBC News’s editorial forbearance began.”

Some within NBC News maintain that it all came down to Farrow not having an accuser willing to go on the record or appear on-camera without concealing her identity. Others, however, insist there was never a period of time during the course of the reporting in which there were no on-record interviews, or a draft of the script without a woman on-camera either silhouetted to protect her identity or with her face revealed. One woman who appeared on-camera early on in the process was Rose McGowan, who addressed the matter in an interview published by The Hollywood Reporter last week. “NBC took a lot of heat for killing the story. But I actually served Ronan with a cease and desist,” said McGowan. (According to T.H.R., “a source who has seen the interview says she did not name Weinstein.” But in subsequent on-the-record interviews with NBC, according to this article, she did in fact name Weinstein. Her attorneys, however, later revoked consent.) “I was never going to let my story be on NBC, but I wanted to ensure that the Times would do it . . . So I pitted [Farrow] against The New York Times.” In either case, one can’t help but wonder why NBC wouldn’t have just stayed the course while Farrow shored up the reporting to a point it was comfortable with, knowing that it could eventually lead to a big coup for the network. (Neither NBC nor Farrow had a comment for this article.)

Whichever version turns out to hew closest to the facts, it seems clear by now that the NBC-Ronan Farrow relationship will only become more fraught. Little, Brown and Co. publisher Reagan Arthur has said of the book: “[S]ome of the most astonishing disclosures about what he uncovered are still to come.” And a source with knowledge of the book told CNN that “one of those disclosures will involve NBC.” The network, meanwhile, needs to figure out a way to support its side of the story without looking like it’s trying to undermine a former employee who is now widely seen as a courageous truth-teller.

In terms of what 30 Rock staffers are expressing about the book, it’s mostly “curiosity,” the NBC News journalist said. “Is he gonna accuse someone by name of being the one to bury the Weinstein story? There’s also just a recognition that we have a target on us right now. People will want to believe whatever version he puts out there, and not believe whatever version is offered by the folks here.” Farrow, for his part, has allies inside the building who are “rooting” for him, as one former colleague put it, adding, “I’m confident Ronan has a story to tell.”